October 2, 2011

A gal in our SS class this morning mentioned that where she lives (on the outskirts of the city), they have been without a land line telephone and internet since August. She just found out this week that they DO plan on having it fixed – within 6 months!! Thankfully, we live in a more “business” area that probably would respond quicker to those needs.
When in Ohio, after a long week of work, you might look outside on a Friday afternoon and see nice weather and wish you could be out there. I wondered what would trigger those feelings here, since the weather is nice most near every day. Well, this week I found out what it was. Looked out the window of my classroom and saw a very large cruise ship going thru the locks of the canal. The school is right across the street from one of the three sets of locks and it takes at least a half hour for the ship to go through. If lucky, there may be two ships in the parallel locks. Rare, but it has happened. Really neat sight. Nice to think you might be relaxing on the deck of a cruise ship. Anyway, it must be the change of seasons, since the cruise ships are repositioning themselves from the Alaska routes down to the Caribbean routes for the winter. For the next several weeks, we expect to see more cruise ships transiting the canal.
This was probably the most exciting week I have ever had at a school in years and years and may ever. I have been setting up the iPads for the children and this was the “roll out” week. I got to go into every class from 5th grade down to kindergarten and talk to the kids about the iPads and then distribute them. Talk about FUN. Needless to say, it was a challenge to set up 150 of these things with appropriate apps to start out with. I was with the kindergarten kids, when a mom came in to remove her daughter from school 15 minutes early to go someplace. She started crying because she didn’t want to leave her iPad! A third grade boy was “talking” to a cabinet in his classroom that stored the iPads. The teacher questioned him and he said he was just “saying good night” to his iPad before going home. Soon, they will go home with the kids, but gotta figure out a lot of logistics first! I think the only week that could compare to this week was my very first year at CHCA when I got a brand new Mac lab. It was probably the first time most of the kids had ever seen a mouse. Now, that was only 20 years ago!
What a contrast in this place. You saw in last week’s blog about the classroom out in the interior where six grades met in one tiny room with little or no equipment. They were trying to raise money for a single computer to be shared by the entire school. Now, I work at another school where each student has a computer.
I dug to the back of the closet today to get a dress for church that I hadn’t worn in awhile. Now it was at the back of my closet built out of cement. Looked at it, noticed all the mold on it. Guess it has to be washed first. Such a problem here during the rainy season.